Writing as art

This lesson asks you to describe how visual art forms and styles carry different messages and contexts, and to know what signs, symbols and styles mean in works of art. The museum offers Islamic calligraphy: the names of its scripts and one study of inscriptions on the walls of Fatimid Cairo. Other symbols and traditions are for your class to bring. ¹

The expectations ask about the messages art carries. When you see writing on a wall, ask: how much space does it take, where is it placed, and how does the shape of the letters change from one place to another?

Read the writing on the gates of Fatimid Cairo with Bernard O'Kane. On the gates of Badr al-Jamali, he notices that Badr's own titles take up much more space than the titles of the caliph al-Mustansir. He calls this "a nod to the real holder of power". At Bab al-Nasr he notices one thing more. The fourth line of writing is carved on the stones of the arch, and it is longer than the three lines above it. He takes this as a sign that it was added in a hurry ².

On these gates, one man's titles take up more room than the caliph's. If you had to carve three names on a gate, who would you give the most room, and why?

• Monumental calligraphy in Fatimid Egypt: the whole chapter, from the stucco of al-Azhar to the front of the Aqmar Mosque.
• Badr al-Jamali: the man whose works O'Kane follows through the gates of Cairo.
• Bab al-Nasr: one of the two northern gates of Fatimid Cairo.

Read about Islamic calligraphy and then about monumental calligraphy in Fatimid Egypt. Write one short sentence in two different scripts, and say what changed for the reader.